What's New Somalia & Kenya

Somalia & Kenya

Health Improvement

• Mercy-USA for Aid and Development is assisting malnourished children and their families in Somalia’s Middle Shabelle and Hiraan Regions.  Mercy-USA, with the support of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and the UN World Food Programme (WFP), has set-up eight supplemental and therapeutic feeding centers that, from January 2007 to January 2010, have examined and treated about 44,150 malnourished children.  These children and their families also received take home food rations provided by UNICEF and WFP.
  

  


This project is providing nutrition support and health services for children, pregnant women and nursing mothers, as well as emergency and supplemental food rations for children and vulnerable families.  This program is also preventing disease through the cleaning of drinking wells and the immunization of children against measles, distribution of vitamin A, and the prevention of malaria through the distribution of approximately 20,600 insecticide-treated bed nets since January 2007.

• In August 2009, Mercy-USA for Aid and Development and the Kenyan Ministry of Health (MoH) - with the support of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), as well as UNICEF and the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) - set up fifteen sites in the Kajiado District of Kenya to treat malnourished children under five years of age, as well as pregnant women and nursing mothers. Over a one-year period, Mercy-USA expects to treat and consul approximately 3,300 children and 5,000 women. This life-saving nutrition program is being implemented in primarily pastoral (livestock herding) communities affected by a prolonged drought.

  As of January 31, 2010, about 2,398 children under the age of five have been admitted into the selective feeding program, 665 suffering from severe acute malnutrition (SAM) and 1,773 with moderate acute malnutrition (MAM). In addition, 144 pregnant women and nursing mothers have been admitted into the program.  The children with SAM are given ready to use therapeutic foods like Plumpy’Nut weekly, while those with MAM are given UNIMIX biweekly. Both are specialized food for malnourished children.
  
  

• Mercy-USA operates four Mother and Child Health Clinics (MCHs) that, from January 2009 to January 2010, have treated approximately 44,400 women and children, including about 24,450 children under the age of five.  These MCHs have also immunized approximately 8,100 children (including about 6,550 under the age of one) and more than 2,060 women, including expectant mothers.  Mercy-USA's MCHs have provided vitamin A, iron and folic acid to about 12,630 women and children, as well as providing OB/GYN services to approximately 7,040 women.  Medical services provided include prevention and treatment of malaria, diarrhea and other infectious diseases, immunization, pre-natal and post-natal care, as well as health education.  Health education activities focus on training and promoting awareness of best practices at the household level to prevent common illnesses and infections.  USAID and UNICEF are supporting these clinics.
  
  

The four MCHs are located in Middle Shabelle (in the town of Gambole/Shimbirole; operational since 2007) and in Hiraan (in the towns of Bo'o and Halgan, both operational since 2007, and in the town of Jalalaqsi; operational since April 2009).

 

• Mercy-USA works to prevent the spread of malaria through the distribution of insecticide-treated bed nets (ITNs) and the treatment of patients infected with this deadly and debilitating disease.  Since 2001, Mercy-USA has distributed over 28,960 ITNs to families with pregnant women and children under age five in Jilib and Hiraan.  Bed netting is a very effective method of preventing malaria infection.  UNICEF has supplied us with the nets.
  
   

• Since 1994, Mercy-USA has been undertaking a well-recognized TB treatment and prevention program in Somalia.  This program now consists of four M-USA specialized treatment centers with public education and community outreach.  The program also includes training of nurses and other health care professionals in TB treatment and prevention.
  
  Opened in 1994, Mercy-USA’s center in Mogadishu was the first specialized TB treatment facility to begin operation in Somalia after the outbreak of civil war in 1990.  M-USA’s second center opened in the northeastern city of Bossaso in 1995, and the third began in 2005 in the northern city of Las Anod.  Mercy-USA’s fourth center opened in the northern city of Buhodle on the border with Ethiopia in 2008.  The four centers are supported by a sub-grant from the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (GFATM).
  
  These four centers, which have a cure rate of about 80%, treated approximately 1,000 TB patients in 2009.  M-USA utilizes the most effective TB treatment strategy, the Directly Observed Treatment Short-course (DOTS) method. In addition to treatment, our centers educate their local communities about TB prevention.
  
  Since 2007, M-USA’s TB centers are also providing HIV/AIDS and STI testing, treatment and counseling.  In 2009, approximately 2,750 persons were tested, treated and counseled at Mercy-USA’s centers.  This project is being supported by UNICEF and GFATM.
  
  Additionally, through an agreement with the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), M-USA’s Bossaso and MogadishuCenters are providing food for TB patients and their families.  Since 1994, the World Health Organization (WHO) has been supplying M-USA with all TB medicines free-of-charge.

• From October 2008 to February 2010, Mercy-USA dug, repaired and rehabbed 87 wells in Somalia.  Thirty wells were dug and rehabbed in the Middle Shabelle region, 21 more were dug/repaired in the Hiraan region, 8 wells were rehabbed and dug in Middle Juba, 8 wells in the Galgadud region, and 20 wells in the Mudug region.
  
  
  
    
   

These 87 vital water sources are now providing safe drinking water to communities with populations totaling approximately 174,000 persons, as well as to over 230,000 livestock.  Many of the beneficiaries are pastoralists or agro-pastoralists and thus depend on raising and herding livestock to make their living and indeed for their very survival.

Since 1997, Mercy-USA has played a vital role in providing safe drinking water in Somalia, digging and repairing 182 wells.  Communities with a combined population of over 440,000 persons are benefiting from this safe water program.

According to studies carried out by UNICEF, only about one-third of families in Somalia have access to clean drinking water.  In March 2009, the USAID-funded Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWSNET) warned that water sources in many parts of Somalia have dried up earlier than normal due to a poor rainy season in late 2008 and a harsh dry season from January to March 2009. This is affecting the central regions as well as parts of Hiraan and Juba where Mercy-USA has many health, nutrition and water-related programs. This is the fourth consecutive drought in Somalia.

Education

• Since January 2007, Mercy-USA, in partnership with the local community, has been providing daily breakfast and lunch to over 500 pre-school, kindergarten and primary school children in two schools in the Kariobangi slum area of Nairobi, Kenya.  The objectives of this program are to improve the children’s nutrition and to increase attendance, reduce dropout rates and improve overall academic performance, especially among girls.  Below is specific information on the participating schools:

  Watoto Weto School
  This school focuses on orphans, whose parents died from HIV/AIDS. Started in the year 2003, it has a total student population of approximately 230 children.
   

  Kariobangi Day Nursery School (KDNS)
  This school was established as an initiative by the community self-help group. Currently, it has a student population of approximately 280 children, ranging from 3 to 6 years of age.

  For many of these children, the two meals provided by Mercy-USA are the only ones that they consistently eat daily.
  
  From March to July 2008, Mercy-USA has provided the children at KDNS with 250 new chairs, repainted 60 other chairs and 70 tables and installed new playground equipment.  The children now have a slide, seesaw and five new swings, as well as a repainted climbing frame.  During 2007, KDNS and Watoto Weto received new kitchen utensils and serving containers; M-USA also repaired damaged kitchen counters.
   

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